


Brother

by charlottesometimes



Series: Heads and Tails Verse [3]
Category: Political Animals
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Brother Feels, Car Accident, Drug Use, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-26
Updated: 2015-02-26
Packaged: 2018-03-15 07:07:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3438131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charlottesometimes/pseuds/charlottesometimes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's instinct to call Dougie when something goes really wrong. He doesn't like it, obviously, but it's still instinct.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brother

**Author's Note:**

> This is set in DC, in March or April of 2012, so a half year or so before the show's events take place. Elaine is Secretary of State and TJ's a few months out from Sean.

TJ's stomach clenches when he snakes an arm through the twisted car's passenger side window frame, somehow managing despite the haze in his head to be mindful of the jagged glass still lodged around the edges. The crash, at least, contorted the car so the glove box is bent toward the window, making it easier to reach, and it springs open without a problem.

He has the cash because Doug gave it to him for exactly this kind of thing, months ago. TJ'd thought it wouldn't come to something like this. Or, he thought he thought it wouldn't come to something like this. But he hadn't spent it, he had kept it, and here he is now.

"See?" he says, turning back to the driver, who rubs her velour sweat pants like she's wiping off wet palms. He holds out the banded stack of bills, wads of Benjamins totaling $4,000. "No way that dent'll cost more'n that. Please just take it."

The woman glances back at her car, which is in much better shape than TJ's--running shape, for one thing; it's still idling--and catches the eye of the woman in the passenger seat. A conversation in eyebrows and shoulders passes between them. TJ can't decide how to read the woman's apprehension and silence, and gives up; he's too fucked up to be solving human mysteries. Shards of glass reflect headlights he can no longer apparently turn off, scattered like dew drops around the asphalt. The moon above them winks from behind a cloud and he can see the rolling suburb-coated hills behind the woman.

"Please," he says.

"You're." The woman swallows. "There's blood all down ..." She passes one palm over one side of her face. "Are you--"

"M'fine," TJ says. He squeezes his cell phone in his other hand, willing it to buzz with Doug's response ... He sent him a message, right? He thinks he left him a message a little while ago. "I'll figure't out. Just take the money and go, and forget it. This will more than cover it. You get it? *More* than cover it?" He's aware he's been more subtle than that just was. But he doesn't give a fuck, really, at this point. His head's starting to pound like he's got a concussion, but that happens so often on a normal day that there's no way to know if this time he's *actually* done blunt force trauma to his brain.

The side street they fortuitously ended up on when the woman's car smashed into the driver's side of his car, sending it spinning across a wide intersection after he pulled right out in front of her, is swimming in his sight.

The woman's eyes might be shimmering, or that might be part of the swimming. "Okay," she says, hoarse. She takes the stack of bills. "Thank you."

TJ nods, which makes him lose his sense of what's vertical, and he staggers in place. The woman's forehead wrinkles again but, just then, TJ's phone buzzes and he brings it to his ear. "Douglas."

"I'm at Bolinger and Hatfield," Doug says, voice hard as flint. TJ can picture his eyes when he says that and he wants to flinch. "You're not there."

"Ah." He gives in, closes his eyes, and asks the woman, "Where are we."

"Fifty-Fourth and Hatfield, a little ways down Fifty-Fourth," she answers quietly. Kindly. TJ hates everything, but repeats the words to Doug.

"Okay," Doug says. "I'll be right there."

"I'll stay with you," the woman says as he hangs up.

He feels his head careen from tired and mechanical to fucking rageful, but he can't stop it. He wants to claw her.

"Get," he says, "the *fuck* out of here. Take the money. And get the fuck out."

The woman straightens. "You're not well."

"What else is new, sweetie?"

She peers at him. TJ jerks his face away and goes to sit heavily on the grass beside the road, maybe fifteen yards from his shattered and twisted Jetta.

The woman goes to lean against her car and watches him. He stares hard at the broken glass strewn over the ground and lets time go. At some point he takes out his vial and gives himself a bump, because he has to and he's past caring who knows it.

Doug pulls up neatly along the curb, sets his flashers on, and emerges to move toward TJ. The woman doesn't look at him; just turns and gets into her car, and pulls toward Doug. He leans against her open window and they speak--TJ thinks he hears the words, "You hear what I'm saying," in Doug's voice, firm.

The woman nods and starts down the road. Doug waves at her as she maneuvers back into her lane, a simple holding-up of one hand, and she returns the gesture precisely; the universal symbol of the responsible adult grimly managing misbehaving children. The women go.

"You'll be fine on that front, I think," Doug says, walking toward TJ unsteadily, as if dazed. "Lesbians I think. Love you."

"Right. So I'm golden. Thanks to the gay hive mind."

Doug leans against the hood of his own car, clutching at his temples. "Shut up a second and let me think."

TJ shrugs and does.

Doug takes three deep breaths, then, finally, looks at TJ.

"They got all the money?"

TJ nods.

"Good."

TJ stares at the glass and his broken car.

"You're *bleeding*," Doug says. "A lot."

"I've been told," TJ answers, and shrugs. "Head wounds. You know."

"Yeah. Unfortunately, I do. Thanks for that."

TJ closes his eyes and put his head between his knees. It helps.

"You're shaking, too."

TJ cracks his eyes open and looks at one hand. It is shaking.

The other one is as well.

"I guess I am!"

Purposeful pounding footsteps in the gravel and glass start up and get louder and Doug's hand grips TJ's bicep not ungently. TJ follows the firm, warm force of Doug's lift upward until he's standing and blinking into the glare of Doug's headlights. Doug himself is a dark shape against the whiteness of his car's glare.

He reaches out and grabs at TJ's hips, presses hard with his thumbs and palms against TJ's flesh, through the fabric of his T-shirt. His hands move up, and around, thoroughly probing the softer parts of TJ's torso.

"Does any of that hurt, or can you not even tell?" Doug asks.

TJ shakes his head: He wouldn't know, but so what. "M'fine."

Doug takes his hands back and conjures his phone, taps at it, presses it to one ear, eyebrows drawn. "We're going to the emergency room," he says. "That car is *bent into a U-shape.* There's not just a *chance* you're bleeding internally, you're *probably* bleeding internally." Doug swears incoherently under his breath, looking TJ's Jetta over. "How you even got out of that thing ..." He swallows audibly, his face flushed.

"Don't remember," TJ hears himself say.

There's a distant ringing sound coming from somewhere, but TJ ignores it.

"Don't remember what?"

"Getting out of the car."

Doug swears again, and there's a click; oh. The ringing sound was coming from his phone.

"Hi, I need a tow," he says.

He gives the details and turns back to TJ.

"Get in my car."

"Not if you're going to try 'n take me to a hospital."

"Fuck you, you're going to a hospital."

"You know I can't."

"You're not dying *on my conscience*."

TJ scoffs. "Your conscience," he says. "I'm so glad that's what this is about."

"Well," Doug replies, voice suddenly so raised it gets TJ's attention. He looks at his brother in the eye. "It's not like I can appeal to your *nonexistent* sense of *self preservation*, so my conscience it is!"

"Oh, my sense of self preservation, my sense of self preservation." TJ feels like a train sailing gracefully and commendably off the rails. "I'm sorry my sense of self preservation doesn't match up with yours."

"Oh, shut *up*." Doug hits the hood of his car, making the thing sputter lightly, the warm engine settling in the cold night. "Fuck your 'coping mechanisms'. If you wanted to *not* dial the phone number for whoever's got the coke, or *not* walk into the bar, you could just *do* it."

"You are so stupid," TJ laughs. "That's not how it works--"

"It is." Doug throws his hands up. A car putters by on the empty two-lane street, illuminating Doug for a few second: He's smiling manically. "It is how it works. You can't try and tell me you're fighting it anymore. You stopped six months for that asshole and you didn't have to throw that away, no matter what he did, you stopped for five months after the distribution arrest, and you didn't have to throw that away, either--"

"Who's fault is *that*?"

"Yours!"

"No. Nobody's. Nobody's fault. I did what I had to. Leave it alone and drive me back."

Doug bellows, "Get in the fucking car right now, Tommy, or so help me God I'm calling Mama and--"

"No way."

"Yes." He holds up his phone, thumb poised. "Absolutely. Yes."

The street goes quiet.

TJ clenches his fists and throws himself into Doug's passenger seat, and slams the door. Time passes and Doug stays outside the car while TJ stays in it. TJ's cold, shaky, bruised, and a little hungover already; he takes another bump. 

The headlights of a tow truck appear at the bend in the road ahead, sweep over the broken glass. Doug speaks with the driver while TJ tries not to think, and his Jetta is soon hooked up to the tow truck as Doug slides coolly into the driver's seat.

He starts up the car and cold air blasts TJ in the face from the vents. He shuts them.

"Take me home," he says.

"No."

"I'm not bleeding internally, Dougie. The crash was like forever ago and I don't feel faint or anything."

"I know how to do this."

"You can't be sure. Anyone could see. There will be a file. Even when Mama does it it's not perfect."

"Yeah," Doug replies, sharp. "They could figure it out maybe. But that's *not* an argument for avoiding the hospital after the fact, it's an argument for--"

"Not being me? Thanks. So's everything."

"Not what I was going to say."

"No, you were going to say, For not getting into a drunken, strung-out car accident, but what's the difference."

"The difference is you were clean five months in Chicago. You were clean two months on the campaign, I think. It's not even about *him* if you don't want it to be. You can do this. You just don't always give a shit."

"I'd be doing it if I could." Street lights cut them both in half every few seconds as they glide onto and down the freeway. "Don't go to the hospital. I'd rather die of internal bleeding than of tabloid rumors, Dougie, please."

"I don't know what rumors could say that would be worse than the truth," Doug mutters.

"Then you haven't got much imagination.” 

"Contrary to what you clearly believe, TJ, what people say about you can't actually kill you."

TJ snorts. "Tell that to yourself even five years ago."

"No, I think I'll tell it to my brother, now."

TJ twists his neck so his whole face is turned toward the window. His chest shakes. "Stop it," he says. "I'm not like you. Just stop."

The road has gotten smaller. Right? Or, no. They're still on the 501. Why's it look smaller?

And why's he feel--shit.

"... Doug?" TJ leans forward, willing himself to stabilize.

"What?"

"I think I'm lightheaded. It doesn't feel normal even for me."

"Okay, TJ."

"What, now you don't fucking believe--"

"We're about three minutes from an emergency room."

"Oh."

"Here's the exit."

He closes his eyes. "Okay."

~vOv~

It's bright in the ER and he stumbles. His stomach hurts by then. They take him in ahead of the line.

They ask what he's done that night and he thinks he remembers well enough to tell them: Coke, E, booze. They inject him with something else and the lights fade.

How can saving his life be worth the old familiar antiseptic smell.

~vOv~

TJ's face is pasty, his lips so chapped they might as well be purple with a fatal frostbite. Take a picture and he would look dead, Doug thinks, but no: Blood stills flows through his veins of it's own accord.

His chest moves and the monitor beeps and Doug thinks, irrelevantly, of what TJ will do when he discovers his famous leather jacket got cut up and thrown out with the medical waste. He'll probably crack a self-deprecating joke, Doug concludes, and smiles. Smiles. TJ. Tommy. TJ.

Yep. Ha. TJ. TJ TJ TJ--

TJ's eyes crack open and, after a moment, focus. Doug leans back in his chair and tries not to look like he's been watching TJ's face for an hour. 

"Ah." TJ licks his lips. His head moves on his pillow, taking in the room. "I did have something wrong with me."

Stubble covers his pale, puffy face, and his eyes are bloodshot, but the long unconscious night has left him, at least, sober. Probably miserable, but present.

He goes on, "Sorry I didn't want to come to the hospital. Guess I was an idiot again."

"It's okay," Doug says. "You had a legitimate fear. I've been on it all night, though, and the file doesn't even reflect that you came in intoxicated. Just a guy in a car accident. Happens every day, a hundred times a day, in DC. And you're under the name 'Aaron Reed'."

TJ nods. "Was I--internal bleeding or whatever?"

"From a kidney, badly," Doug says. "They skipped testing and just cut you open to cauterize it. The bleed just so happened to show up as a bruise on your skin. If it hadn't, they would've had to perform tests to find it, and that might have taken enough time that you died. So yeah. I would say there was something wrong with you."

"And I'm." TJ closes his eyes and swallows. "Now I'm good? I'm fine?"

"You're good. You'll need to take it easy for a while. And you might have a scar on your back.”

"Well, killer," TJ says. "It's about time. Been trying to get one for years.”

“Do you hurt, right now?” 

TJ nods. “I can feel where the scar'll be. Do they know?” 

“No.” 

TJ's muscles all relax at once, like he's melting into the hospital bed. “Thank you.” 

“I did it for them, not you. Mom's way past the end of her rope with you. A fucking car accident, TJ. I saw your car, and I saw that woman's car. You got T-boned, right? You pulled out in front of her. How fucked up *were* you?” 

“On a scale from one to ten, ten being the maximum amount of fucked up I've ever attained, I'd say about a seven, seven point five.” 

“Well. Perfect.” 

“My car?” 

“Totaled. I talked to the dealership about two hours ago. I hope you still have some of that money Dad gave you after rehab.” 

TJ shrugs, and the gesture is exactly the same on him as it was at 15. 

“Is that what happened? You pulled out in front of her?” 

“What d'you care? I thought you decided they'd keep quiet because they're lesbians, so I'm their spirit animal.” 

“I just want to know.” 

TJ grunts. “Don't remember. I thought the same as you when I, like, came back to myself. First thing I remember is standing by the car and thinking I needed to get them the cash.” 

It's like Doug's senses are suddenly overburdened, unable to process everything, because his eyes shut of their own accord. “Fuck you, TJ.” 

“I know it's not good. I'm not stupid.” 

“Well, no, let's be clear on this point. You *aren't* stupid—when you're sober. Which we both know isn't all that often.” 

TJ just shakes his head. A moment passes. Then TJ asks, “What happened to my jacket?” 

Doug can't physically prevent himself from smiling. 

~vOv~ 

Twenty-four hours for observation in the hospital spent with only Doug coming to see him once will not rank among TJ's favorite memories, he decides when he finally gets cleared to put on the clothes Doug brought him. Every time a doctor or a nurse came in, he wondered if they knew him, and what story they told themselves in their heads: Gay, so he deserves his problems; worthless addict doing damage to the LGBT cause with his usually very public failures; casualty of ambition, a sign that nobody can do everything, not even Bud Fucking Hammond; a simple party boy who gets a bad rap having a bad day. He hated them for thinking anything at all. But he was polite and cooperative and moved when they told him to move and inhaled when they told him to inhale. The sheer impossibility of getting through the experience without a few bumps--who knew what happened to the vial that had been in his poor jacket's pocket--only drained away as fast as the hours did.

Somehow he managed to get cleared to leave after 24 hours in the place, but he managed it only thanks to an accumulated rage in his chest that felt like a teetering jenga tower.

He couldn't bring himself to say much as Doug herded him into his car and started for TJ's apartment. Doug didn't seem much for talking either, focused on emailing from his iPhone while driving.

TJ doesn't bother to say anything about that.

When Doug pulls up to the curb outside TJ's building, he reaches behind his seat and produced a simple white clothing box, which he sets on TJ's lap without a word.

He can't imagine what this is supposed to be. He looks up at Doug to gauge his expression, and Doug looks--predictably--anxious and concerned.

TJ fixes on a face of careful curiosity and snaps open the scotch tape and flips the box top to reveal a replica of his jacket.

He immediately wants to be anywhere else.

"Doug."

"I know where you got it tailored, at that place on Commerce, and they still had your measurements."

TJ figures that if he tries to say something to Doug, he'll scream. He stares at the jacket.

"Are they ... Did your measurements change, or?"

TJ shakes his head.

"Okay."

TJ opens the car door and shuts it carefully behind him, the jacket held in one hand away from his body, like  a leaking garbage bag.

The car, and Doug inside it, are quiet as TJ walks away from them.

He stops, a few yards from the bottom of the building's glossy double doors. 

At least he can do this, he thinks. This one thing right. 

He turns back to where Doug is still idling, waiting for TJ to go inside like he's dropping off somebody else's kid, and raps on the passenger-side window. Doug lowers it. 

“Thank you,” TJ says. “Uh. For all of it.” 

Doug smiles a tiny smile, and TJ feels an outsized gladness. He wishes they saw each other for scheduled lunches to try out new Thai restaurants, or for basketball games on TV and hot wings. He wishes he had an Xbox Live account he used—Dougie does, his secret vice—and that they played together sometimes, tag-teaming it when stupid kids started throwing around obscenities. He wishes the first thing Doug did when he saw TJ was smile and ask how he's been, instead of shuttering his face and eying him, searching his appearance for signs of life-threatening debaucher. He wishes that when he asks Doug how *he's* doing, Doug took it as the genuine question it is, rather than as a deflection and a sign that something's wrong, and TJ's trying to hide it. 

“'Course,” Doug says. The smile is still there, and it's a real smile, and for a short suspended moment TJ thinks: I could do this. I could be somebody who makes the people I love smile instead of frown. I could be something they look forward to. 

The moment passes. He smiles back, but he knows it's weak, and Doug's own smile fades when he sees TJ's false one. 

But it's cold out, and TJ's toes are numb, so he doesn't try to fix it. 

"Hey, um." Dougie jerks his eyes away, and down to the car's center console. "You should call me. Or text me. If you need a ride. Any time. If that wasn't already clear to you. I always have my phone on me. Please call. You do understand why it's important--"

"*Yes*." Doug startles, and then he does look at TJ. "Yeah. I understand. Yes."

"So do it."

TJ nods, hoping his expression says enough. If he had to explain, he wouldn't sound honest.

"And you can come over, too. If you need to just be somewhere else for a while. Or if you need to crash somewhere. If you need. Anything."

He is *not* going to just walk away from two heartfelt gestures in a row.

He clenches his teeth and manages to push out, "Yeah, Dougie. Okay," without eye contact.

Doug smiles again and turns in his seat so his facing the steering wheel. TJ steps back from the car.

Doug holds up a hand as he pulls out, and TJ holds one up in return.


End file.
